Was Here
by Esperance
Summary: "You know what I'm going to do after we pull this off tomorrow?" Matt, Mello, and wishful thinking on the normal lives they could have had after the Takada kidnapping. Genfic.


**Author:** Esperance

**Rating: **K

**Fandoms/Characters/Pairing:** Death Note, Matt & Mello, (shockingly) gen.

**Word Count: **2788**  
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**Author's Note:** Jotted this down on a trip back from the mountains (I don't really remember how it came to me; I think I just liked the idea of them talking to one another from bunk beds?), edited it like crazy over the course of the next week, and finally finished smoothing out all the dialogue during my visit to **Alarmingly** **Alannah**'s place last weekend. I tried my best with researching hostels, and got slightly sidetracked when looking up old-school videogame soundtracks. (The 8-Bit Party Rock Anthem is amazing, just so you know.) Lyrics are from Regina Spektor's song _Begin to Hope__._

**P.S. **To get a little bit more out of your reading experience, pay special attention to Matt near the end, especially in relation to Mello's mood fluctuations, and do consider all the variations of "leaving your mark" on something._  
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**_Also, I would really, really love to break this review-less streak I've been having lately, so...please drop me some kind of note if you read this and find it at all enjoyable._**

* * *

_Begin to hope_  
_ And all the colors start to change beneath the light_  
_ You might forget that the world's so sad_  
_ You might forget that things are awful bad_  
_And it's alright_

* * *

On January twenty-fifth they blow into the outskirts of town right at sunset, coasting in on the fumes left in Matt's clunker of a cherry-red '89 Super Coupe, a battered suitcase each and fifty bucks left to their names. The first hostel they find is off a back alley in the worst part of town, its small electric vacancy sign overshadowed by a flickering neon advertisement for a soda brand that's been out of business ten years. They leave the car unlocked, passing darkened apartments with forgotten shirts fluttering over the balconies, ignoring the offers from the girls at the door with their ripped short skirts and the incomprehensible screaming in the room behind the folding card table functioning as a front desk. The tired-looking owner promises them privacy, clean sheets, and a free breakfast over his shoulder in his best broken English as he leads them up three flights of narrow, metal steps and directs them to the last room at the end of the corridor.

The rectangle they walk into is more of a jail cell than a comfortable overnight lodging, at just around ten by fifteen feet, with an equally cracked sink and mirror in a corner and bunk beds against the opposite wall. The wallpaper with apple stamps attempting to inject a little charm into the room is discolored and peeling at the bottom, and empty frames hang crookedly where imitation paintings were once displayed. Matt takes to it as placidly as he does everything else-be it broken game consoles, lost cigarette cartons, or planned suicide pacts; he calls top bunk and swings his duffel up on top of the frayed, faded blue bedspread to claim it.

He goes to take his last smoke break of the night and comes back with takeout, slightly-singed chicken and pasty noodles drenched in an unidentifiable brown sauce. It's not much, as far as last meals go; definitely not chocolate, but then again Mello's lost this appetite for that lately. Too much of a good thing, and you start getting _attached_.

They sit by the door, backs against the wall, making stilted conversation as they linger over the last mouthfuls; comments on the general sketchiness of the neighborhood, the uneventful drive into town and places of interest they saw by the roadside, the weather. When they finally finish, Matt kicks off his boots and scrambles up the rusted ladder to his bed and Mello goes to his own bunk to lay down, for lack of anything better to do. For once in his life, besides one very important score to settle tomorrow, there's nothing else to plan for. No more ideas to generate, no one to contact in his network, nowhere to go. He pulls out his semi-automatic and toys with the barrel and hammer, listening to the clicks and snicks of a loaded machine. It used to give him such a fuzzy feeling.

Above him, Matt must be feeling gutsy tonight-he's got the volume of his game on, and it must be one of his favorites because Mello recognizes the tinny 8-bit soundtrack, the many beeps and blips set against high-pitched synthetic chords. There's the electric equivalent of a trombone slide and a snappy half-time ditty to signify his character's death when Matt calls down to him.

"Hey, Mello?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think we'll..." he trails off, hesitating. "I mean, we've got this, don't we?"

Mello closes his eyes and sighs, suddenly jaded. "We do."

"Good." The defiance in his voice is almost amusing, the blind faith so like a stubborn child's.

The loading screen song for his game loops a few times, Matt no doubt thinking of how to word his next question, and Mello turns to study the multilingual graffiti set against the wall beside him in striking black ink: the usual obscenities and names loving gender-specific genitals; phone numbers and cities, with dates stretching back from two months to fifteen years before; a lyrical quote or two, a traveler's original line of wit, words as likely to be from an Ancient Greek philosopher as from a travel book. He traces a finger along the grooves of a message carved instead of scribbled on, by someone that was as bored as he is, no doubt-

"You know what I'm going to do after we pull this off?"

The query is innocent, almost naive, but Matt has never been as simple as asking it implies. And Mello hasn't exactly given him much reason to hope beyond tomorrow either, even in the opening planning stages of the kidnapping. Not that he's ever said the exact words of what he is almost certain will happen, but Matt knows; he knows the Kira case backwards and forwards, the numbers and statistics and the mortality rate; he heard the call to Lidner, he was there when they left almost all their things in their apartment back in New York and bailed in the middle of the night, and he's the only person alive that can look into Mello's eyes and read exactly what he's not saying.

Mello sees the question for what it is-a way to vent, to project an immediate future he wants to see instead of the glaring, oppressing alternative-and takes the bait. If only to ease the pain for a few minutes. Matt deserves that; he deserves so much more, in fact, but if this is all that Mello can give-

"Can't imagine."

The glee in his voice is almost palpable as he takes this as a cue to continue. "First I'm going to chain smoke a pack, you know, work off that adrenaline rush. And then I'm going to hop back in my car and drive until I find the first diner I see and sit down and have a three-course breakfast: bacon and eggs and biscuits-"

Mello lets the words wash over him, the sound of Matt happier than he's been in months, maybe since before he walked back into his life. If he keeps his eyes closed, he can pretend it's like old times, back in the camaraderie of the Wammy days, when they lay in their respective bunks in their old dorm room, staying up late and making detailed plans about the their future beyond the gates and into the world they'd rule. Plans so different from what life had thrown at them instead.

"-and I'm going to drive until either my gas runs out or the sun goes down, whatever comes first. And then I'm going to park and watch the sunset and know that I've lived to see another day."

Mello winces. In every scenario he could think of when structuring tomorrow's heist, Matt never made it out, not once. And he'd tried every strategy he could think of: changing routes, times of day, even switching their assigned roles. It didn't matter. Matt was always left to die somewhere along the road, most likely shot, worst case scenario a heart attack.

Mello had sent men to their deaths before when he had been in the mafia, often without a second thought, sometimes even telling them beforehand that it was a suicide mission. But Matt...to him, Matt will always be that skinny redhead kid with the freckles and missing front teeth who helped him sneak cookies out of the kitchen and wasn't scared to shove him into mud puddles. And if there was absolutely any other way, he'd send Matt packing right now and do this all himself. But this plan requires two, and he's the only person he'll ever trust completely.

"What about you?"

He snaps to attention. "What?"

"What are you going to do after this?"

Mello completely blanks. It doesn't happen often, with a mind as sharp and conditioned as his, and it's always frightening.

It's just-he's never _planned_ on there being an afterwards. He's cut his losses and made his peace, tied up all the loose ends he can, and made his last confession to a priest in the hopes that God will look past all the blood he's spilled to let him earn some eternal rest.

He doesn't want to die, because it's still losing even though there's the consolation of going out with a blaze of glory knowing Near will always owe him for this, but at the same time...he's _exhausted. _He feels so old and spent he keeps forgetting that he's just twenty-one. Most people his age are still in college, or working some crummy food service job, and he's already seen more of this life than they ever will.

Besides, what could there even be after this to make it worth living?

Matt's still waiting, and he blurts out the first thing he can think of. "Chocolate. I'll eat a bar of that." Because it's uncomplicated and probably expected of him.

"Good start." Matt approves, his voice smug and halfway mocking. "And what else?"

"And-" he looks for inspiration in the aged mattress springs above him. He searches the far corners of his mind, having buried all the things he once enjoyed in that time period he considered his youth. Long ago, he used to use his imagination, but then it was the make-believe of elaborately-costumed pirates and bandits and spies in the midst of searching for buried treasure or holding up a train or scaling a skyscraper. How did he ever have time to think of only things he wanted, instead of all that must be done?

He finally closes his eyes and thinks of where his subconscious would have him be, picking up on his surroundings and the state of his soul. He uses his imagination at last; how sad that he had almost forgotten how, and now he's only using it at the end. "I think I'll take a bath," he says finally. "A hot bubble bath in one of those porcelain tubs with the claws, then I'll get out and spend the rest of the day reading Shakespeare and listening to opera."

"Wearing nothing?" Matt asks, light teasing in his voice.

He can picture himself, dripping onto some fluffy white towel spread across an upholstered couch, flipping to the last act of Macbeth, the strains of Mozart at his ear. Finally clean from all the blood and dirt and grime of his life, at peace and nothing to prove. He smirks. "Not a stitch."

He surprises himself, and probably Matt, who most likely thinks he's done. "And I think the next day I'm going to get my hair cut short. Maybe dye it." He'd need a change, he realizes. After tomorrow, the Mello persona would have worn out its welcome. He could strip it off, piece by piece, fold it and seal it away, maybe reveal what's left of the person he would have been all along. The day after he might buy new clothes, jeans and flannels and oversized sweaters, then burn all the old leather he'd worn like a second skin. And the one after that trade in his guns, using the cash for something mundane like groceries or a utilities bill. Regardless of whether he lived or died the next day, the position of L's successor would still be forever out of his reach, and the world would no longer need Mello.

Matt's head suddenly appears, upside-down, over the top of his bed, a goofy grin making his rumpled off-color hair and bug-eye neon goggles somehow endearing. "I'm trying to picture that: a brunette Mello."

"Mihael," he says quietly. Too quietly, and Matt asks him to repeat himself.

"It'd be safe to go back to my real name then. I could get my personal records back, declare myself undead, and actually use it when I buy a new house."

"Not an apartment?"

He pictures it: A one-story chalet, brick, painted cream with forest green trim. Two bedrooms, one bath, light filtering through open circle bay windows and onto coordinated walls and carpet in warm shades. An antique clock in the foyer making the only sound, a tuned grand piano in the living room center, matching pots hanging from a rack in the tiled kitchen. Outside a stone path to a flower garden and a koi pond, where he could sit on sunnier days underneath an oak tree and pen his memoirs. Maybe if he lived close to a wooded area he could take long walks in the late afternoons, particularly when the leaves changed.

"I'd try the country for a while. Something small. Hire a decorator, put a fence around it, buy a cat-"

"-Name it Hershey?" Matt interjects.

He quirks an eyebrow. "Godiva is much more refined for a Siamese cat," he says archly. "She would only eat cooked meats I hand-fed her, and she would come when I rang a bell."

"And how would you afford this cat?"

He shrugs. "I've got some accounts I can liquidate from my mafia days, and when that runs out I can...I don't know, give violin lessons." It's been years since he picked one up; surely his muscle memory would still be there, after all those hours of sitting in the practice room at Wammy's, committing Bethoven and Paginini to memory. Sometimes he can still smell the resin on his bow, or remember the feel of the bow as his fingers curled around it. The shaking of his left hand mid-_vibrato_, the low _legato_ strokes and the feeling of accomplishment after a perfect run-through of a caprice. He wonders if he would have the patience to correct a child's posture, or gently remind a novice of a consistent mistake in their sight-reading.

Mello meets Matt's eyes and feels the corners of his lips tug upwards. "Maybe I'll let you visit on Sunday afternoons for tea."

Matt wiggles his eyebrows. "Maybe I'll stay the night." Mello swats the air.

Matt's face takes on a more thoughtful look. "Sounds like you're trying to be...normal." He inflects the last word like it's distasteful. Maybe it is to him; all Wammy children were indoctrinated with the belief that to be ordinary was equivalent to inferior.

"Maybe."

Matt's eyes grow distant. He finally says," I think I'd like normal."

Mello wonders what Matt's life would be beyond that hypothetical drive into the sunset. He wonders if Matt would surrender the goggles and games and three packs a day for something equally mundane. An office job with computers, or an engineer. A loft apartment in New York or Chicago. If he should happen to meet a nice girl at a coffee shop downtown or at a concert, and what she would look like and if they would get married and how many children they would have. Maybe he could have a namesake. He tries to picture Matt with grey hair and laugh lines, arthritis and liver spots. Talking over the phone as the years passed and laughing as they started sentences with "Hey, remember when..." He tries to picture a gravestone with MAIL JEEVAS written on it, with subheadings of husband and father, and numbers indicating a long, fulfilled life.

He thinks about asking, but Matt's head disappears for a brief moment before returning again, dropping something on Mello's chest with a delayed command of "Catch!" He stares at the chocolate bar before back up at the kid, who somehow manages to shrug with just his head visible.

"I took the liberty of getting it for tomorrow."

Mello pulls at both ends with his hands, smoothing out the wrapper. "Thanks."

"No eating it until then, though. Right after the kidnapping."

"I'll eat it sitting across from you in that diner."

Matt's smile changes, softens until it's just barely there, his eyes holding some kind of emotion Mello realizes he's been holding back this whole conversation. "I'll hold you to that."

His head joins his body back at his bunk, this time staying, and the game music starts up again to play mode. Mello puts both the candy bar and gun beside his bed. For a long moment he thinks about digging the pen out of his pocket and writing his name **WAS HERE** with the other graffiti on the wall, but old habits die hard when you're wanted in every major city in the world and you've been going by a pseudonym since you were five.

And who knows, maybe they'll come back to this god-awful place at the end of the day tomorrow and he can do it then.

"Good night, Mello," is the last thing Matt says after he turns the light off, the shadow of his body hunched over his video game outlined against the wall from the shining screen.

Yes, he thinks he would have liked normal.

Mello listens to the sound of Matt dying over and over again until he falls asleep.

* * *

_I was here but now I've gone to take a walk_  
_ And I won't be back, 'cause its a lovely day_  
_And none of us know how long we've got to stay_

* * *

**Further commentary on this fic can be found under the entry at my livejournal, esper_kay.**


End file.
